


Rage Against a God

by inadistantworld



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Canon Related, God Can't Kill Me, Guilt, He's not the smartest one but he does have a lot of strong feelings, M/M, Protectiveness, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 18:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18103661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inadistantworld/pseuds/inadistantworld
Summary: When Grog finds out that when they kill Vecna the Raven Queen is going to take Vax back he has some things to say about that. There's no god in existence that Grog fears and he is not ready to lose Vax.





	Rage Against a God

**Author's Note:**

> Thought I'd squeak this one in before ECCC starts! Super excited to go and I know I haven't been very active but I had this thought in my mind a week or so ago that would not leave so I decided to give it a shot.  
> I use a lot of canon dialogue from the episode Fate-Touched because I felt like this could fit into the canon story well without much altering. Anyways, thanks for reading! Hope I don't die when I get my picture taken with the cast but like, not the worst way to go.  
> Also trying to be more active on my twitter, same username as here, but I'm not very good at that yet so check it out at your own risk.

Vax had died. Turned to ash and nobody was sure if there was even enough to bring him back, but they were going to try some new spell Keyleth had that took more diamonds than they’d ever seen in their lives. Percy felt pretty confident that they could get those diamonds and the others were talking about all their magic things or their numbers and all Grog knew was that Vax was dead and they were going to find diamonds in the morning. That was for tomorrow though, they couldn’t do anything tonight but get ready for it. So they finally decided to camp for the night high up in the trees of the Shademirk.

In the hours before everyone went to sleep Grog watched from the sidelines. Nobody seemed to notice, all so wrapped up in their grief in one way or another. The goliath was fine with that, he was still trying to figure out what he was supposed to do anyways. It wasn’t every day he saw his lover as simply a pile of ash and there were a lot of emotions burning in his chest, most of them were enough to send him into a rage, but there would be time for that later.

Vex held his feathered armor against her chest and her eyes were red and puffy and every time she felt like she had no more tears left in her to cry she would start again. Keyleth curled up with her, wrapping themselves around the little that was left. Percy was close by for his wife, watching and making sure that she had what she needed to keep going. He brought her water, covered her with a blanket, laid a hand on her arm when she was sitting perfectly still with no expression. He didn’t push her to stop feeling what she was feeling, though there were many moments when Percy was there to pull her away from drowning in them with words like “I need you here” and “We will do whatever it takes to bring him back”. Grog liked that. Percy was…put together for Vex. He would have to try to remember that for when Vax came back.

The others moved about too. Quiet and with sad eyes. Sometimes they talked, tried to reassure each other or make plans, but for the most part it was silent. Scanlan had wrapped up the dust Vax left behind, hoping it would be enough to pull him back together again. Sometimes they cast looks Grog’s way, looks they thought he wouldn’t notice. Percy looked at him like he was trying to size him up, trying to understand a puzzle. Scanlan opened his mouth to say something but quickly closed it and looked away. Only Pike sat down next to him, tried to talk about how she was going to try and bring him back, how they’d figure something out.

Grog forced himself to smile at Pike because…well she was Pike. He said something along the lines of “I know” or “Thanks Pike” or something just to let her know he was thankful, Pike always told him that was important, and then he got up and walked off into the trees to have a moment where nobody looked at him like _that_ anymore.

Nobody stopped him or asked him where he was going or told him not to stray too far and that it was dangerous out in the Feywild. They had never seen Grog like this and so they had no idea what they should say.

Most of them could clearly remember the way he had reacted to Scanlan’s death that he had been nothing less than a raging storm of emotion. It had been much more predictable considering Grog was usually a man of impulse and strong feelings. This was much worse than the calm before the storm they had expected. It reminded Pike of something else, something she hadn’t thought about much since her time working on a ship when she had been warned about tsunamis. Grog was the ocean pulling away before it rose up in a wave terrible enough to destroy a city. Grog was no storm. He was the silence before disaster struck and when it did, he would be the havoc too.

Grog found himself unintentionally standing near where the eye the color of bile when you have nothing left in your stomach to throw up had tried to dig down into the earth. The leaves were dark blues and purples that were even larger than Grog’s hands. Apparently this was the same forest that had been all oily and gross with that fucking weird guy in the tree. Grog wasn’t so sure about that but he wasn’t a tree expert or anything.

After a few moments of standing in the woods he looked over his shoulder to make sure that nobody was around to see him. Once he felt safe in the fact that he was alone he looked down at his closed fist. He could feel his blunt fingernails digging into his palm and there was the same ache in his knuckles that came from when he gripped his axe too tightly for a long time. He took a deep breath, held his fist up at chest level, and uncurled his fingers.

In the palm of his hand was dark gray ash that was clumped together from sweat after being balled up in Grog’s hand for so long. Scanlan had showed him the ash and Grog had taken some to keep it close, but now it seemed stupid.

Grog frowned and narrowed his eyes at it. Most people would have been threatened by that look, but it was simply one of deep thought for Grog. He was thinking about Percy’s hand on Vex’s arm, the way he had gently placed her dinner in front of her without pressure, the soft press of his lips to the top of her head, and the quiet words he said while still giving her the space to grieve. Grog would never tell Percy but he was the one Grog looked to in terms of romance. He loved Scanlan and all but gnome wasn’t a committed man like Percy and Grog were. So Grog was secretly trying to learn something from them and it was how Percy was trying to be there for Vex that stuck in Grog’s mind while he looked down at the ash of his ally, his friend, his lover.

Grog cleared his throat and shifted in place a little awkwardly. They had all kept calling the ash and the armor Vax and Grog remembered all the other times people had died and that everyone treated the body like it could hear them. Vex had told Percy she loved him, Scanlan had them all sleep in the same room as Percy’s body, even he had sung to Scanlan to bring him back. Still, it felt weird talking to what was basically dirt, it didn’t even look or smell like Vax, it could have been anything.

For a moment there was a hot flash of rage and hatred and fury in him at the sight of _his Vax_ just being nothing more than damp ash in his pale hand. It was almost all-consuming and for a second he considered dragging Delilah’s body out of the Bag of Holding again just to have something to let his anger out on. But he didn’t. Vax, wherever he was, was alone and no amount of Grog destroying Lady Briarwood’s body would fix that.

“You better come back,” Grog grumbled down at his hand. “You shaved half my beard. I’m the only one who gets to kill you.” Grog believed that about all his friends, that whether they lived or died was up to him and him alone as he was their biggest and strongest ally. It was his responsibility to protect their tiny, squishy lives. And this time he hadn’t been good enough. He had been sent away, banished for most of the fight, and Vex and Vax had died. Vex was crying and saying that she left him back there and Grog knew it was his fault. If he had been there things would have been different. “You promised that when this was over we would go back and learn that monk shit for that Kord guy. So you better come back when Keyleth tells you to.”

The ash didn’t answer. Part of Grog had secretly hoped it would. He then shoved the ash into one of the pouches on his belt and turned to walk back to the rest of the group.

Everyone was setting up in the trees, getting ready to sleep their wounds and exhaustion off. “Who will take first watch?” Percy asked, always first to bring them back to the matter at hand.

“I will.” Grog answered gruffly and the matter was settled.

Percy, who had always been a light sleeper, woke up to the sound of a bird or something snapping a twig off in the distance. He sat up to see his wife and his best friend curled around Vax’s armor, sleeping with tear tracks on their cheeks and the occasional sniffle. Grog’s massive form was sitting on a thick branch and his axe was laid across his lap.

Percy carefully maneuvered his way across the thick tree limbs to sit beside the goliath. “Go to sleep, I can take over for a little while.”

“It’s alright,” Grog answered, “You got roughed up pretty badly, you need it more than I do.”

“You need it too. We have a lot to do tomorrow, we need everyone to be at their best.” Percy cracked his neck and leaned his back up against the trunk.

“That’s what I’m sayin’,” Grog’s fingers wrapped around the handle of his axe for a second, “You’re all weak. I’m barely even hurt, I can make sure nothing sneaks up on us.”

“Grog,” Percy said in his ‘I’m smart and fancy and you should listen to me’ voice, “you’re more useful when you’ve had a full night’s sleep. I’ll wake Pike in a few hours and we’ll all have had plenty of sleep then.”

Grog frowned and grit his teeth, his grip tightened on his axe until his knuckles were white and then he let it go again. “Yeah. Alright. But you wake me first if you see something out there,” Grog said with a hard edge to his voice.

Percy only tilted his head in acknowledgement and said, “Of course.”

And with that Grog found a study branch nearby to fall asleep on.

 

Grog’s sleep was deep and dreamless like always. The way he woke up was the same as always, too. He had to pee.

It was only Scanlan and him still up in the trees when they got up and they could hear voices down below them. Scanlan called out “Where did everyone go?”

There was a pause in the conversation before Keyleth said, “We’re down here.”

When Grog climbed down and turned around to ask his friends why they hadn’t woken him up he found himself looking at a pale, naked man with long black hair and a bruise on his chest like wings of a bird. The bruise was new but the rest of him was exactly like Grog remembered. That was probably what made it so hard to believe.

Grog was silent for what felt like an hour. Vax just stood there and looked at Grog with a tiny smile and waited for him to say something.

Grog didn’t say anything to Vax, instead he asked the question they’d all been thinking about. “Is this real?”

Percy hesitated for a moment before he said, “We’re not sure.”

Vex, who was standing closer to her brother than anyone else but still kept looking over at him like she was afraid he’d vanish any second now. “We’re figuring it out,” she admitted.

Grog nodded stiffly. “I need to pee.” He spun around and walked off without saying anything else.

Grog did his business and then he opened the pouch on his belt where he had put Vax before. Still there, a handful of ash coating a few other things Grog had forgotten about. Grog wasn’t sure what that meant but he didn’t like it.

When he came back he crossed his arms over his chest and regarded Vax again. “I was asleep, and now you’re here.”

Vax nodded.

“You made a deal with your god, or something?” Scanlan asked, obviously continuing what they’d been talking about while Grog was gone.

In all honesty, Grog didn’t care. They all wanted to talk about Vecna, who they already knew was evil and they had to kill him, and about Vax’s job and his debt to his god or whatever. There was something that did catch his attention though. “If we defeat him do you go away?”

Vax didn’t answer his question, just stood under Grog’s intent gaze while everyone else demanded him to answer and clarify the deal that brought him back. All the voices sounded thick and heavy, like Grog was underwater, but he just watched Vax until the half-elf finally said, “It was death or come back and help you.”

Grog whistled and said, “Oh fuck. Oh shit.”

Scanlan seemed uncharacteristically somber and for once he kept his jokes to himself when he said, “So if we win, you lose.”

Vax nodded, “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Well, that’s a brave choice,” Scanlan whispered.

“Yeah,” Grog agreed quietly. It was brave. And stupid, even Grog could see that.

Keyleth’s voice was soft, like she was already regretting asking. “Are her deals final?”

Vax shrugged his slim shoulders, “I don’t have a lot of experience with other gods making deals, Keyleth. But I want you to live a long time. And I want you two to live a long time and be happy. And I want you to get a halfway decent relationship with your daughter. I want you to lead many people. I want you to change the world. I want you to do all the things I know you can do.” He gestured to each of his friends in turn and then took breath. “Forget it.” His eyes then fell to Grog, the only one he hadn’t said anything about. “Grog, I just want you to be free.”

There was something about that that made Grog angry. Like Vax’s life and Grog’s freedom couldn’t be together, that Grog would be freer without Vax at his side. “Thank you, New Vax,” he said and turned his nose up a little, like it was an insult. New Vax and His Vax were both…that word Percy used…markers…or makers…martyrs. That was it. Percy had told him about it once before and that was what Vax was trying to do. Die for the cause, die for his friends to live better lives. It was stupid because Grog knew that life with Vax was much better than without it, all he had to do was think about last night to know that was true.

“I don’t accept this as a closed contract,” Keyleth said with that fire and strength and refusal to back down that Grog loved about her.

“Yeah, me neither,” Grog said firmly.

Grog didn’t say anything after that, he just watched Vax like he was trying to study him. Everyone else was talking about plans and places to go and things to do next. Apparently they didn’t need diamonds anymore despite them wasting so much time the night before on diamonds. Percy said something about going to Vasselheim to recruit gods and that seemed to be what everyone else was on board with. And in a last ditch effort for something to go Grog’s way, he howled in hopes of the werewolves finding him. There was no answer.

 

And then they were standing in Vasselheim. And Vax was there, alive and in front of him…and he didn’t know how or why. Scanlan thankfully had the same dumbstruck look he did.

“Are you real?” Grog asked, looking at his lover with suspicion and pain and just a bare amount of hope. All these magic users were so tricky he wasn’t sure if he could believe his eyes.

Percy cleared his throat and said in his _Percy_ voice “He is abundantly real.”

Vex and Pike were talking to each other about memories and the Feywild or something but Grog ignored them to turn to Scanlan. They both just looked at Vax while they whispered to one another. “This is weird for you, right?” He asked the gnome.

“Totally,” Scanlan responded. “He was dead a second ago. Now he’s alive.”

Grog immediately went looking through the pouches on his belt and asked, “Is there still dust in your pocket?”

They both found the ash in their pockets and Scanlan reached for his whip. “He’s not real! He’s an illusion. He’s an illusion!” He went to lash out at Vax but the whip dropped from his hand and he grabbed at his face. “Oh, my eye! Why does my eye hurt so much?”

Grog looked away from Illusion Vax for a moment to look at his friend, “What’s with your eye?”

Scanlan was holding his hand over his eye where the throbbing ache flared up again, like there had been something trying to pull the eye from the socket. The pain was deep and harsh despite there being no evidence of a wound. “I don’t know! It shouldn’t hurt that much!”

The others didn’t seem terribly concerned about Scanlan’s eye or Illusion Vax and when Pike walked over to him he was caught between a ton of different things he wanted to say so that she’d understand and help him. Before he could though she touched Scanlan’s arm and Grog’s hand. She smiled at them and there was the familiar heat of her healing magic coursing through them and they were flooded with memories from their time in the Feywild.

Scanlan investigating the yellow eye, trying to pull his own eye out and Pike being the only thing that stopped him, Vax showing up in the morning out of nowhere, Vax telling them all that his god is going to kill him.

“Oh, that’s why my eye hurts,” Scanlan said and Grog nodded but only had eyes for His Vax who had perfected his tortured and sad but confident in his decision look. He looked like all those paladins in Vasselheim other than Kima or like Percy when he said something about the needs of the many.

They began their search in asking the gods for help. Some of them did, some of them didn’t, but Grog was confident that they didn’t need those gods. He wouldn’t get banished this time, he would be there for the fight and they’d win. But that was a problem for tomorrow, he had business to attend to before that.

When Grog thought Vax was asleep he got out of bed and pulled on his armor. “Grog? Where are you going?” Vax asked into the dark.

Grog didn’t mind that Vax’s body was cool to the touch or that his heartbeat was so slow that he wondered if it was just his imagination. He did find it a little weird that he wasn’t sure if Vax slept anymore. “Jus’ for a walk. I’ll be back before you know it,” Grog leaned down to kiss Vax quickly before leaving his maybe undead boyfriend alone.

The walk to the Raven Queen’s Temple was easy and the streets were almost empty. And there was not a single soul there to stop Grog from opening the doors to the temple nor anyone to show him the way out or even the way to where he wanted to go. He didn’t need them though, Vax has told him about this place, about how he took swims in the pool of blood and all that.

When Grog found himself standing in the col, marble room with the thick red pool in the ground he strips, because that’s what Vax said he did, and he took his first step in.

It was cold and thick, like blood from a fight that ended a while before they started looting the bodies.

He took another step.

It was nothing like the blood Grog knows. It was worse. It was not fresh from a fight for their lives or even for the good of others or anything.

He stepped forward again, now up to his knees.

It was false. It was not the way it should be.

His hips now.

It was cowardly. All this blood with no enemies around it just left to be cold and sticky.

He looked down to see it was at his belly button.

Maybe it was just some kind of scare tactic, but Grog had seen better. Grog had done better.

It was just below his nipples.

Grog couldn’t believe this was the god who thought she had a claim to Vax’s life.

He was up to his throat.

That this god believed she could take Vax away.

It was on his lips and it tasted bitter and hollow and he bit his own lip to remind himself what blood and rage should be like.

And then the pool was smooth again and Grog was taking deep breaths despite his lungs begging him to stop.

How dare this god think he’d be so easy to get rid of.

His mind began to go hazy. He didn’t remember Vax saying anything about that.

Who does this Raven Queen think she is to steal from him?

His limbs were heavy, he was not even sure he could kick his way free anymore.

Vax was his to protect and he would not fail him again.

And then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just empty black.

And for a second Grog thought that the Raven Queen really was a coward who killed him like this so he’d be out of the way. And he let out a roar for the ages, one that would shake the temple if he had been inside it still.

When he opened his eyes there is a huge white mask of a woman’s face. In a distant, calm, and almost bored voice she said, “He walks to me willingly.”

Grog snarled up at her, naked and weaponless and with only the taste of hot blood to ground him. “You’ll have to get through me first.”

“A mere mortal?” She almost sighed. It’s like she pitied him. “You are alone, Grog Strongjaw. You have no god to go to war with me, you have no tribe at your back, no weapon on this plane, no way to make a deal with me. You will lose this and my dear Vax’ildan will still remain my Champion evermore.”

Grog pointed one finger angrily in her direction, “I will be waiting for you when you come for him, as will the rest of Vox Machina. But remember this, it’s me you should be worried about. I don’t need a god on my side to kick your ass.” He growled low and deep in his throat, “Vax stays with me.”

And either banished from her presence or because he had stormed away from her, he awoke at the bottom of the blood bath. He forced his way to the surface and crawled onto the marble where he coughed up the blood from his lungs and stayed on his hands and knees for a moment while he recovered. And when he looked up there stood a faceless statue of the woman. He bit his lip again, digging deep into the flesh before he spat a mouthful of hot, fresh blood onto her feet.

“You’d better be ready to fight me when you come for him.” And without ceremony he stood, wiped himself down, dressed, and returned to Vax’s side.

Vax smelled the familiar scent of the Raven Queen’s temple and saw the smudges of blood Grog missed, but he said nothing. In fact, he thought it was good Grog had gone to see her. Perhaps it had given him closure.

While Vax thought about closure Grog dreamt of killing gods and saving Vax from himself. Someone had to, after all.


End file.
